How high can fees for sports rights go?

Television networks combined pay about $3.1 billion a year for the rights to the National Football League's 16-game season, up 35% from their last deal. Although the NFL's contracts with CBS, Fox, NBC and ESPN still have two years to run, the league would like to have new deals wrapped up by the end of this season, in February.

The three broadcast networks could end up joining ESPN in paying 10-digit dollar figures per season in their next contracts. "It's not for the faint of heart," said Fox Sports Chairman David Hill when asked about the next round of NFL negotiations. Already, ESPN and the regional sports channels are the most expensive basic cable channels on the dial — often costing distributors such as DirecTV and Comcast three times more than what they pay for news or entertainment networks such as USA, TNT and Discovery. Distributors worry that continuing to pass along sports costs to their customers could drive more away. "The American consumer is screwed big time," said Rocco Commisso, chairman of Mediacom, a small cable operator with just over 1 million subscribers. For decades, the rising cost of sports rights has been among the biggest sources of conflict between programmers and pay-TV services, which occasionally have dropped sports channels for short periods rather than pay rate increases. The fees have gotten so big that even some of the NFL's own are wondering if a reality check is in order.